Around these parts, projects needlessly using a microcontroller where a simpler design would do are often derided with the catch-all “Should have used a 555,” even if the venerable timer chip wouldn’t have been the ideal solution. But the sentiment stands that a solution more complicated than it needs to be is probably one that […]
The cartridge based game consoles of decades ago had a relatively simple modus operandi — they would run a program stored in a ROM in the cartridge, and on the screen would be the game for the enjoyment of the owner. This made them simple in hardware terms, but for hackers in the 2020s, somewhat […]
Every year, USB flash drives get cheaper and hold more data. Unfortunately, they don’t always get faster. The reality is, many USB 3.0 flash drives aren’t noticeably faster than their USB 2.0 cousins, as [Chase Fournier] found with the ultra-cheap specimens purchased over at his local Micro Center store. Although these all have USB 3.0 […]
By some estimates, the English language contains over a million unique words. This is perhaps overly generous, but even conservative estimates generally put the number at over a hundred thousand. Regardless of where the exact number falls between those two extremes, it’s certainly many more words than could fit in the 64 kB of memory […]
Lithium technology has ushered in a new era of batteries with exceptionally high energy density for a reasonably low cost. This has made a lot possible that would have been unheard of even 20 years ago such as electric cars, or laptops that can run all day on a single charge. But like anything there […]
Those who indulge in trading card games know that building the best deck is the key to victory. What exactly that entails is a mystery to us muggles, but keeping track of your cards is a vital part of the process, one that this DIY card scanner (original German; English translation) seeks to automate. At […]
This week, Jonathan Bennett chats with Neal Gompa about Fedora 42 and KDE! What’s new, what’s coming, and why is flagship status such a big deal? Website: https://neal.gompa.dev/ GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/Conan-Kudo Neal’s business (Velocity Limitless): https://velocitylimitless.com/ Neal’s podcast (Sudo Show): https://tuxdigital.com/sudoshow Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right on […]
Printed circuit boards were once so simple. One or two layers of copper etched on a rectangular fiberglass substrate, with a few holes drilled in key locations so components could be soldered into place. They were functional objects, nothing more—built only for the sake of the circuit itself. Fast forward to today, and so much […]
These days we don’t get too fussed about miniaturized electronics, not when you can put an entire processor and analog circuitry on a chip the size of a grain of sand. Things were quite different back in the 1980s, with the idea of a credit card-sized radio almost preposterous. This didn’t stop the engineers over […]
You might think you don’t need a hearing aid, and you might be right. But in general, hearing loss eventually comes to all of us. In fact, you progressively lose hearing every year, which is why kids can have high-pitched ringtones their parents can’t hear. You’d think hearing aids would be pretty simple, right? After […]